


The War Is Over

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Rebuilding, Spoilers, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-10 09:05:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over and Jack goes to bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The War Is Over

The war is over and Jack goes to bed.  
  
The war is over and Jack hugs her damn kids (and they're hers and she will fucking rip out the hearts of anyone who fucks with those kids and feed it to the fucker) and checks in with people. The war is over and Jack keeps the radio on, listens for _anything_ and hey, maybe there's a tear in her eye, extra little rasp in her throat when one by one they check in but no word of Shepard or the Normandy. The war is over and Jack is meant to be sleeping on some damn uncomfortable army bed but she sits up with a gun in her lap where the kids crash, ready to awkwardly play mama bear to them if they need it. The war is over-  
  
The war is over.  
  
Shit, Jack's always been fighting a war. Fighting what they did to her as a kid, fighting herself and all the messy inner demons Cerberus left her with, fighting whoever got in her way; she was alone, self-contained even if it felt like there were a hundred different people clawing away inside her skin. Trying to find herself and erase herself at the same time and her body will always tell the story but there's still room for a few more things, lines that can be altered. All save for that N7 on her ass. That meant something, still means something because she learned how to trust, showed Shepard, King of the fucking Boy Scouts all the ugly, messy fucked up parts of herself because no one stuck around with Jack. Except he did. It's not like she'll fully trust everyone, hell she won't even fully trust him or herself but she can try and that's big, that's huge. He helped her find herself, listened, blew up that damn base and let her know it was okay. It's hard to be soft, to let herself drop all her guards around another person and that night before the Collector base she almost didn't go up to him because she can face down mechs, geth, mercs, Collectors - she can take on the damn galaxy and then some - but being vulnerable means being hurt. She's had that knife to the gut, it wasn't just a metaphor.  
  
But she stopped pacing. She was Jack, she was an all powerful bitch and that scared little girl that still curled up and cried under a desk deserved a chance. Crying like that right there in front of Commander Shepard, King of the Boy Scouts, hero of every damn thing and then some, maybe that took more guts than anything else she's ever done.  
  
A cough jars her back to the real world but it's just Rodriguez, rolling over in her sleep.  
  
The war is really over. It's been over for hours now but it's a frantic mess and she and Cerberus cheerleader ended up holding their hands over some sorry soldier's open wound as the Reapers exploded, Husks and Scions and everything else raining debris down on them. One hand each, a biotic barrier up and they'd looked and it doesn't erase the fact that Miranda is a Cerberus bitch and that Jack still wants to smear the walls with her more than anyone else but they'd smiled. Their mouths had moved but it was so damn loud, screaming in her ear, explosions all around her and her head is still buzzing. The med teams can't spare anything, not right now when they're running on adrenaline and fumes with all the frequencies jammed because no one can shut the hell up and all she wants to know...  
  
Fuck, Miranda's still around, they did it once they can do it again because if Shepard is gone- Except she can't think like that or the world falls to shit. She shows these kids, her kids, that she's a human being and gives them all the pep talks, tells them how proud she is with a fierceness that would put a krogan to shame that they will be the best damn biotics the galaxy has ever known.  
  
"Jack!"  
  
The voice is in her ear, Joker's voice and god, she never thought she'd be so happy to hear him again but there's a lump in her throat she blames on screaming orders and the celebratory whisky that got passed around. (She didn't give the kids any, didn't need them KOing but once they're somewhere a little less post-apocalyptic she'll take them, maybe when they get inked, a round of shots to take the edge off the sting.) It takes her longer than she'd like to get her voice going, a croaking rasp but shit she's been fighting and she needs to take first watch over the kids just in case.  
  
"Jack we're coming, all of us, we're going to find him."  
  
"Damn right, Cerberus cheerleader's here," because if they're all going then Jack is going to be the bigger (better) person. "Send the coordinates," has she ever sounded more like a soldier in her life, she highly doubts it, "we'll be there."  
  
Kahlee is barely sleeping either, telling Jack to take what she needs and goes and fuck if Jack doesn't feel guilty when she walks out the makeshift shelter, looking back one time to check on them but they're safe, they've got this. If this is the mom routine then it can kiss her ass. Miranda falls into step with her soon enough, both of them armed to the teeth because it's Shepard they're going for and everything in the galaxy is stupid enough to gun for him.  
  
"Your sister," Jack begins, just to say something. After all the noise and chaos since she got off Purgatory the world has been all noise but now it's almost deathly quiet, snippets of conversations, rubble being cleared, shuttles dropping supplies or moving people around.  
  
"Safe," Miranda replies, said softly as a prayer. Jack gets that. First time she's cared about the well being of people other than her, killer protective instinct honed in on people who deserve better. "Your kids?"  
  
"Sleeping it off, bet they'll be pissed I'm not gonna be around for the re-enactment tomorrow or whenever." Because that's the weird thing about a fight, you sort of lose all sense of time and with all the dust in the air it's impossible to tell what time of day or night it is, not that it matters because she's sure that even the Salarians will sleep like the dead for months after this.  
  
"I heard what they did, what you did, it was-"  
  
"What we had to do, all of us."  
  
It's perhaps the most civil conversation they've had as the Normandy comes into view and the adrenaline, the rush of endorphins, everything Jack has done to keep herself going not just for herself but for her students drains out of her. Garrus hauls her up onto the deck, Tali grabs Miranda.  
  
The war is over and Jack passes out in the Normandy hangar without a care in the world.

* * *

  
  
She's sure her pacing is driving them nuts but everyone is driving each other nuts. Joker has the ship going as fast as she can, weaving through wreckage and it's a mess out there, same as everywhere else but it's taking too damn long. Wrex punches a bulkhead once. It sums the mood in the CIC succinctly. There's noise everywhere here too, where they all check in; Jack's getting a lot of messages from her students, wishing she were there, hauling them in, cackling as she hugs them because hey, she's not afraid of that now. Maybe she can drag Shepard with her. That's what none of them say. They're getting him back, that's a given but no one knows if Shepard can survive this, the damn elephant in the room they can't address because if Shepard ended the war with the Reapers but didn't make it out to see the end result then they won't be able to keep going.  
  
The war is over and Jack's going to find him but if Shepard has checked out now she's going to start a new one once they've put him back together again.  
  
"There."  
  
Liara's voice is soft and tremulous as they all crowd into the cockpit, not really fitting but somehow it works, peering out at the sum of all their efforts. This is what they did. All the races on the ship (and the names on the wall Jack walked past, trailing her fingers over it as she wondered who else would need to be added) did this. It's over because one man managed the impossible - they have a future now. Jack's sure she'll end up babysitting some krogan because if there's one human that can handle them, it'll be her, Garrus will get to make jokes about quarian architecture as he watches Tali build her house on Rannoch. The asari will rebuild, hell they live long enough, they'll pull it off.  
  
Joker gets them in nice and close, holding steady for them to suit up and get to the shuttle, piling in and shit, Vega is heavy with the controls because that's clearly the only reason for Jack's stomach to lurch so violently as she sits sandwiched between the door and Grunt (Grunt who looks bigger and god, the galaxy sure as hell ain't ready for any baby Grunt's he'll go on to make) because she's not nervous. She's not terrified. Her heart isn't beating wildly in her chest making a desperate bid for freedom.  
  
"Shepard if you didn't make it outta there I'll be damn pissed," she mutters under her breath just to say something or else she might just explode from the tension gathering in the base of her skull.  
  
"I'll say," Garrus mumbles only she can't see him past a wall of overgrown krogan muscle, "damn near proposed to me back on the citadel."  
  
"Bite me Vakarian, I just wanna get laid."  
  
It does the job. A laugh goes up, starting with the husky whisky laugh of Alenko (she might need to get him involved with the kids so they're not complete fuck ups and just to screw with him, he's too straight-laced for her) until she's vibrating from it.  
  
Once they're all out it's good, a chance to stretch out and it looks ridiculous, all these people in full combat gear (scorched, scraped, torn up and chewed out in places) striding through the remains of the Crucible. Every time they went anywhere there was a fire fight and now they're the most overpowered, over armoured, over armed squad with nothing to shoot. Jack wants to run but it's a brisk march for all of them, boots ringing out on metal floors, a sharp staccato beat that does nothing to help with Jack's mood or her rising anxiety until she says fuck it, her curse echoing off the walls as she starts running.  
  
"I swear to god Shepard, I will destroy you in the afterlife if you're dead, you hear me asshole?" They probably think she's crazy but hey, everyone thinks that about her anyway as they race after her until she skids to a halt.  
  
"Normandy this is Miranda," the voice sounds very far away as Jack drops to her knees, feeling around for a pulse, dog tags cold against her sweaty skin, "we need a pick up and a medical team _now_."  
  
Her face hurts from smiling and she's sobbing, great heaving ugly sobs in front of everyone Shepard has ever reached out to and adopted into his big screwed up space family who followed him into hell and back. The war is over and when she grabs his bloodied hands, his fingers twitch, closing over hers.

* * *

  
  
So they all take shifts because that's what you do when you love someone. And they all end up sleeping communally in the mess because no one wants to be far away and it's easier to get to where they need to be, running the ship themselves. Garrus tells bad jokes, she plays cards with Vega, Javik still doesn't shut up with his stories but they sound fonder now, Tali makes schematics of the house she wants to build, Jacob and Miranda talk about Jacob's bouncing baby, Wrex and Grunt she's not sure about but it's probably babies too, Liara and Samara are talking about Thessia, Kaidan is talking to Joker over the radio and Zaeed and Kasumi are swapping stories. Chakwas only lets them in for brief moments, rambling on about vital signs and risk of infection and this whole list of things that Jack always wants to call bullshit on but can't. Sometimes she paces the Normandy, skulks around in her old spot until she gets to draw up a seat beside Shepard, filling him in the way they all do.  
  
If Jack were unconscious and subject to the inane stream of babble that Shepard is she'd hurl a singularity at them except this is what Shepard does, what he's always done according to Wrex, Kaidan, Tali, Garrus and Liara, checking in on them, helping them out with their own problems even when there's a mission. Jack never wants to leave him. She's never felt that way about anyone, maybe it's just Shepard because there's no way she can imagine feeling this way about anyone in quite this manner.  
  
It takes a couple of weeks where they drift through space doing little jobs because it's the Normandy and that still means something and Jack gets hopeful beacons and all that bright shiny futures shit before they have to start leaving. Tali's an admiral and Rannoch needs her and Garrus tags along because hey, he can't miss a single stage of quarian architecture. Wrex doesn't want to miss babies and Grunt has other krogans to head butt or whatever it is that they do and Jacob has a baby too. Too many damn babies. Miranda wants to be with her sister and Jack can't blame her and manages to say something mostly nice that's meant to be about Oriana and Miranda is big enough to get that Jack means her too. Samara departs to help shelter the innocents. Kasumi drags Zaeed off with tales of how there are unscrupulous mercs shaking down refugees already and Jack's going to miss Zaeed, she likes his brand of crazy but the ship at least settles after that. Life moves on, just the way it's meant to. Just a skeleton crew remain with Shepard hooked up to a frightening array of monitors, too much tech after all the things they've fought.  
  
It's when she's reading Sun Tzu (it was either that or beat Vega then Javik to death with it) that he coughs and Chakwas orders her out (it takes everyone to haul Jack out and a threat of being sat on to shut her up) and Jack screams, kicks things, throws a few crates around with her biotics until she breaks down and cries again and she'll have to kick his ass for this, she'll ruin her reputation with all these tears.  
  
Finally, a fucking eternity later, they let her in and Shepard looks like he should be dead, his body one great big bruise, eyes bloodshot, wrapped up in bandages and medi-gel but still the best damn thing Jack has ever laid eyes on as she hops up beside him on the bed, fluttering panic making her shake. He lays a hand on her leg and she barks out a laugh because of course after defeating the Reapers and almost dying again Shepard offers comfort.  
  
"The war's over," she croaks out. It means I love you you asshole, thank god you're alive, you fucking did it and I'm so proud I could burst.  
  
"Yeah," Shepard chokes, "it's really over."  
  
Pure instinct has her pulling him in, mindful of the injuries, mindful of all the shit he's been put through that would make another person buckle under the strain and she holds him through it, rubs her palm over his head and croons the same noises she's made for the kids on those blessedly rare occasions they've needed her to be mama bear. She cries too, silent tears of relief until Shepard's let it out, at least for this round. He leans back and smiles up at her, beat to hell but alive and hers because they're going to be selfish for at least a month once he's cleared for activity again.  
  
She can't keep the world out forever and she kisses him because she can, because he's alive and he's hers, sitting up there with an arm around him, not afraid of a damn thing as the rest of the remaining crew crowd around him until he falls asleep against her side.  
  
"You never did show me that tattoo," he mumbles, the words slurring together.  
  
"All in good time, you're making me wait for what I want after all."  
  
The war is over and medical bay beds weren't made for two but they manage and Jack finally falls asleep with Shepard's head on her chest to the beep of the heart monitor and his fingers linked with hers, smiles on their faces knowing they get to wake up to good news for once in their lives because every damn one of them who fought that fight deserves the peace he's finally bought them.


End file.
